We're Learning to Understand (pg-13)

Mel's Diner was a quaint-looking place. Kas doubted anything really troublesome happened there, other than typical rowdy crowds that reminded him of places back home like the Hard Rock Cafe.

His intention was simple; stop in for a greazy, unwholesome slice of cheeseburger heaven, and think about the situation at hand.
Eve was willing to accept him for who he was, without fully knowing.
Though it was the most amazing thing he could ever ask for; his conscience was still eating a hole in his thoughts.

It wasn't fair to her. Not knowing who he was, what he'd come from, the things he'd done. It was like trying to see a shine in something black. How long could it last..? A relationship founded on lies? How long could Eve fool herself into seeing a man worth spending her life with, when there was so much death surrounding him?
While it was safer for her not knowing his past.. he was still placing her in danger, too.

Kas sat alone and waited for the waitress to make her rounds, staring down at the menu without actually reading it.

Loika pulled some of her hair back into a ribbon and let the rest fall back over her shoulders. She retied her apron and come back out into the eating area. Even in a diner waitress outfit the new manager was still making her climb up on the ice machine to fill it. She was gunna talk to the owners about this shit. The new manager was horrible. She shoved that out of her mind and went back to work.

She saw someone out of the corner of her eye waiting at the counter. She pulled out her notepad from her apron and walked up to the counter. She didnt look up from her notepad and spoke with little enthusiasm. " Welcome to mel's since 1947 the best burgers in newyork. our manager sucks and if you think grabbing my ass is on the menu i'll kick yours." She usually spoke in a more friendly and upbeat way but today had been long.

"You treat all of your customers like that?" Kas lightly mocked. "Sounds like you're having a fantastic day." He went on dryly to answer. "Howabout.. number three." Whatever it was, statistically that was the one thing most ordered here. He hadn't plucked that detail out of thin air, so to speak.. Kas had been focused on voices and words and numbers throughout the building just as an effort to distract himself. Anything to outrun the mind-gnawing guilt.

"This isn't such a bad place to work, seriously." Slightly more morose than normal today, Kas didn't make an effort to curb his snark. Loika was tougher than a typical girl, anyway. Kas felt like impressing the idea that a legit job is something to be thankful for nowadays.
"Look on the bright side, the uniform isn't so drafty."

Loika almost dropped her pad when she realized who it was. Why hadnt she smelt him? Then again all she smelled was cooked meat. Which frankly made her gag. Her demeanor lightened and she actually smiled. " Sorry long day. Seems like all the ruffians come here and treat our asses like stressballs."

She took his menu and made him a hot chocolate. Mel's diner made their hot chocolates from real milk and chocolate. She set it down in front of him. " On the house. Your dinner is also on me." She said with a smile. " ill get that number 3 for ya right away." She turned around behind the counter and leaned towards the kitchen. " Hey! i need a newyorker with a side of supermodels!" She yelled back into the kitchen. As she called back to the cook she pulled her hair up into a ponytail. A barcode tattoo on the back of her neck was visible.

After she ordered Kas's dinner she went around to her other customers at the counter and at the tables. She refereshed some drinks, brought people their food, and brought an elderly man some pie. A young woman and her husband were at a booth with their booth with their baby. The man was in the bathroom and the woman was having a hard time getting the baby to stop crying. Loika tucked her ticket pad into her pocket and offered to hold the baby. Loika held the child while the woman found the child's bottle in her purse. She had the child soothed before the woman found the bottle.

After she handed the woman back her infant and recieved much thanks she returned to the counter to check on Kas's food. Everyone was happy for the moment. She stretched and then leaned on the counter. " So..."

Resting his chin on one arm, Kas watched Loika walking around and doing her job, especially curious when it came to the crying baby that had been an unnerving source of noise. Loika was fitting in with people. She did it fairly well; good enough to pull off starting a family.

He'd seen that barcode before, knew they shared orgins in an artificial world. Though he didn't like to bring up the subject. At least Loika had the satisfation of seizing her vengance by the throat, literally. For Kas, it meant nothing but impotent anger. They denyed him a real life, and disappeared from the face of the earth- leaving him with nothing but questions.
Such as: how could he create a meaningful existence without them? Could he really function in a normal lifestyle? Kas was able to fool the general public, though having friends and family was something very different.

The reminder of Loika's tag made him heave a grumbling sigh, and Kas put his forehead against the tabletop with a 'thud', not even looking at the hot cocoa.
Loika came over, leaning on the counter, and he still didn't look up.
"So..." She said.
He sighed again. "So..?"

Moving to sit halfway up, propping his head on an arm, Kas tried to dredge himself out of his shitty mood.
"I forgot you told me about working here. But since I've run into you here, I should ask you.. is that rage-machine boyfriend of yours going to get nosy about you having an unexplained large amount of money suddenly?"

Loika sighed when Kas let his head drop to the counter. She patted the top of his head and ruffled his hair. " You look how i feel. I hate being around so many people. It gives me the shivers up my spine. I have to take the long way home to sort myself out before i get home. I hate crowds."

His food was finally ready and she set the plate in front of him and made sure there was ketchup on the counter for him before she went to check on her other customers again. When she came back He asked her about Peter. " Peter... he is.. Is complicated. I took a day off recently and had Sara watch our daughter. I told him about the dancing...and" She lowered her voice. " The drinking and the drugs. He was mad but we talked things through. He keeps a closer eye on me now so i dont slip up but everything is okay. He thinks all of it came from dancing."

Loika's confession of disliking the crowd was heard, and understood. There was a time crowds made him panic, but he had to learn to quickly work past it. Fear didn't hold many sways on him.

"That's a valid conclusion. I'm glad you two got it all sorted out." Kas genuinely meant what he said. He was hopeful for Loika to keep her family together. But part of him was jelous. He wanted to smack himself for it. It was stupid and illogical.

"Two thousand should probably cover the lessons, junk you need for the class. Whatever is left over, you can use for baby stuff." Because they needed -alot- of it.
"If there's any questions about where it came from that you want to avoid, I can forge a good story."

Loika's smile dissapeared to a more serious face. She leaned on the counter again and looked him in the eyes. Something she rarely did to anyone. " Kas. When you helped us rescue Mackenzie and when i helped you with your little trip to that lab... You seemed to know alot about laboratory procedures and layouts....Were you a weapon too?" She hadnt put anything together up until now. She started to ask him more when her manager yelled at her to quit talking and get back to work. She took out her ticket pad and wrote down a name and address and slipped it across the counter to him. " This is the name of a bar around the corner. Meet me there? I still have a few more hours of work."

Kas was perfectly fine to let Loika get back to work, and pick at his food in silence. After finishing most of it, he left what was mentioned under the plate. A check folded inconspiciously between two ones. He didn't like her question, but Loika had at least some right to know. Especially if there was going to be any more cooperation going on.
Not that he expected judgement from her, but it stung to talk about the past, and made Kas feel like he was whining. Everyone had problems. Some people were better equipped to solve certain ones than others..
He was the man who never gets caught; but Loika could make a baby stop crying, whereas Kas would've lost his gourd.
That was a weighty example problem to him. Evelyn really liked children. He didn't know anything about them.

So in a hope to understand, Kas later went to the directed bar around the corner from the diner and waited for the appointed time. When Loika was due to arrive, he'd already put away quite a few drinks and had another half empty within reach.
He would tell her what she wanted to know about the past, if she would help him figure out to move on in life.

Loika walked into the bar a few hours later. She was 17 in years but because of her X-genes she could easily pass for a woman in her 20s. She also had a fake id. She looked exhausted as she sat at the bar next to him. She wore a light coat for it being such cold weather outside. She and Lakai would always be 108 degrees. A temperature that would kill most humans.

She plopped her butt onto the barstool and slapped some money on the bar. " Whiskey. Jack Daniels. I dont wanna taste none of that cheap stuff you hear me?" She said to the rough biker looking bar tender. The man scowled at her but went to get her drink. She turned back to Kas. " Sorry im late. Teenager that wouldnt leave. Oh an, keep the drinking between us. Peter doesnt let me drink."

"That's fine." Remarking to both distantly, it was questionable if he'd even heard the reasons for her lateness or anything else afterward.
Kelly's eyes didn't leave the surface of his glass.
"I guess I should start at the beginning? K4-Z12 is my born, given name. Every minute of my life has been part of a freakish experiment. Two years ago, the whole thing was buried. No kidding. The lab got sucked into the sand.. so there's not much to prove the story."
His prepared explaination was given in a disengaged sarcasm. Kas was imagining someone else's reaction. Someone who didn't and hopefully never would know what being programmed like a machine was about.
"Whatever you ask me doesn't leave the bar. I'm sure you can comply with that. We both have things we would like to keep in confidence here."

As soon as the bartender brough her the whiskey she shot it back like a biker. It didnt seem to effect her at all. She set the glass back on the bar. " Keep em comin precious." She said to the bartender. She turned her head to look at Kas and let her hair down. " Im not sure how old i am entirely. I was like 9 or 10 when i got my powers. It was my birthday and a older boy from school tried to...to touch me." She traced her nail along the grain of wood on the bar. " That was the first time i shifted. Id been sick all week. But yea...something took over me. I killed the boy before i could stop myself."

The bartender brought her the next whiskey and she pounded back half of it. No need to really pace herself though. Her high body temp burned off the whiskey fast. " My mom hated me to begin with, so to find out i was a mutant gave her a reason to finally rid herself of me. She called a scientist name William Stryker and actually sold me to him." She was holding the class of whiskey with both hands but her hands were shaking as she hesitated to continue her story.

A hint of a dark frown formed as Kelly listened, still staring into his glass.
He couldn't imagine why any mother hate their own child so, but unfortunately it still happened.
People who formed a pattern of wrongdoing, especially young, normally continued on it for the rest of their lives.
The boy she killed couldn't go on to damage anyone else.. and Loika had endured Fate's punishment for the mistake, becoming a tougher person.
How did she keep a moral sense after all that was inflicted on her?
Loika managed to deal out retribution to the person who made her life hell; without turning that vengeful wrath on the rest of the world, and those close to her.


Kas glanced up a moment, giving her that usual blank look.
"And yet you manage to keep that 'something' under control."
It was a question and a compliment at the same time. Kas only wished he knew Loika's secret to fitting in, and building a life that seemed by most appearences like a normal story.

Loika continued to stare into her glass. " I spent my childhood in a dog crate. I was cut multiple times to see how fast my healing factor would work. They'd break my bones for the same reason. They tested different things on me in hopes i would become a weapon." A few tears started to roll down her cheeks. " Ive been shocked multiple times and i was shot in the head. Stryker discovered it was a great way to wipe memory of my kind."

She downed the last of the whiskey and slammed the glass on the bar with a thud. The bartender seemed to be getting it and went to get her a third. " I spent a long time living with a wolf pack after i escaped. I was talked into coming to xaviers by one of their old x-men."

She looked up at Kas after staring at her feet for so long. " I dont have anything under control Kas. Im always going to be a freak. I cant be in small spaces, I freak out at the smell of disinfectants. Hell... i cant even sleep next to my own boyfriend without damaging him or the sheets in a night terror."

"What are you saying, then? Was leaving the animal kingdom behind a good choice? Or a pointless one?"

Hearing Loika's woes didn't outwardly appear to effect him. Though on the inside there was a pang of sympathy. Of course the story was never a perfect one. Freaks they would always be.. but there was some proof and alot of stories; which told that sometimes love could transcend many differences. The question was whether or not they had any hope of finding that, or if they were better off staying out of a fantasy world where they didn't belong.

"You're alot smarter than girls our own age. Do you think the life you picked is a mistake, or not?"
The words might have been blunt, but the delivery was calm. He lifted his glass and tipped it up to drain the rest of the Coke and whiskey, then glanced to Loika, wondering at her answer.

" Sometimes i wished i would have stayed there. Life was simple with the pack. On the other hand i never would have had Mackenzie." She stared at her 3rd whiskey. At the rate she had been drinking a normal man twice her size would be feelin pretty good. She barely felt anything. " I didnt want this life Kas. I...i actually tried to kill myself more than once. Every time i would just heal. That was before xavier's but still. If i had a choice. I wouldnt be a freak." She stirred her whiskey with her finger. " I didnt pick a mistake. I am one."

Kas sighed. He couldn't say anything on the kind of talk Loika was doing. He argued the same things with himself for years. Kas still had no fear of death; but at least he wasn't at the same point of succumbing to the belief it was a welcome repose, as some. A point he visited before.

"So your daughter is a mistake?" He snorted, and leaned down over the bar, stretching out an arm to hold the empty glass out. Kas folded the other under his chin and cast a tired glance at Loika. "Fantastic."

Kas was aiming to piss Loika off; and a mother's defense of her child was a quick way to accomplish that. He didn't like the self-defeatist attitude, or seeing somebody he knew was made of tougher stuff giving in to such depressive thoughts.

"Listen. If you were a mistake, then so are all the things you did. Killing Stryker? Having a baby? You can't take a number out of the equation and still have the same results. There is a reason we who we are."

She made an anxious laugh and close her eyes as she pressed her glass to her head as if she had a head ache. " In a way yes and no. I never planned for Mackenzie. Im glad shes here and all.. but it wasnt like we were trying to get pregnant."

She tipped her head to look at Kas again. " Admit it. You hate it too Kas. The nightmares. The wondering if today is the day they take me back? Sure i killed Stryker but ya know what. Theres more Strykers out there. They all want to use us. We arent alive to them. We are goddamn weapons." She poked him in the chest where is own barcode was. " We even have the serial numbers to prove it."

"Of course there's more Strykers." He arched one brow as Loika jabbed a nail at him.
They could fight the ones who come to take them back, or die trying. It was the ones she mentioned that were already in the past and haunting the present that posed the most problem as he saw things.
"So we're not alive to them.. But.. are we alive -at all-?"

Kas didn't really even know what alive was, until he was let out of his cage, so to speak. Then he tried anything he could, to find out what he had been missing. There was one piece of any story missing still. He was always alone.

"They want us to be as meaningless to ourselves as we are to them. But we must have a meaning.. we're still here, and we're not the last."
Kas waited for the bartender to take his glass and bring a full one, then took a healthy drink of it.
"If anybody even tries taking you or your kid, they'll have one massive fucking shitstorm to deal with."

"we are living half of a life. Half of us is going to be back in those cages. The other half is goint to try and pretend like we are human and we belong with the humans."she knew her reply would sound synical but it was the truth.

"what is our meaning? Are we supposed to be like comicbook characters and save mankind? The same mankind who tortured us?" she looked around to make sure no one was listening to their conversation. "ive already set up things for an emergency. Ya know if anyone tries to take her again"

She stretched and made a surprised but relieved face. " ive never told anyone any of that. Not even peter." she smirked and drained the last of her glass.

"Well.. at least you know I'm good with secrets." Kas remarked.
He was already fairly on his way to shitfaced drunk. Though outwardly, he didn't act it.
Kas was leaning on the bar like a languid stray cat, observing the surroundings with half-lidded eyes and no conveyance of emotion.
"Comic book characters have their appeal, but I don't really fancy brightly-colored capes and Spandex."
The appeal of the comic book hero, or even villain, was thier resoluteness. Their commitment and willpower to do something.. Something great, something destructive, something only for the knowledge and experience.
They were making progress.. otherwise, the story would not continue.

"We don't have to be saviors, unless you feel like that is a fulfilling meaning."
He sighed, sitting back, to the point he balanced his chair on two legs.
"But maybe protecting a few people, or a person you love is meaningful enough."

"i dont want to be a savior or a hero. I just want me and my family to have a happy life. Free of being hunted like animals." she looked over at kas and smirked. He was tipping his chair on two legs.if he fell she would most likely laugh before helping him.

She picked up her fourth and final drink. "so superboy. Knowing that we always have to live looking over our shoulders, you think you would wanna settle down with eve?"

Kas nodded at Loika's sentiment, smiling vaguely. If that was all she achieved; then so be it. There would still be someone carrying the memory, the story of her life..
At the next question, he jolted upright, and the chair tipped back.
Kas flailed, trying to find purchase before the back of the chair hit the floor.
His sweaty palms slipped off the laquered bar counter.
A mere blinking before minor disaster struck, the density of the air shifted, offering boyancy as if Kas was floating in an alpine lake. The chair rose minutely, setting itself right.
Leaning over the bartop again, Kelly was gritting his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut.
Something like a lightning strike went off in his head as soon as he thought about Loika's question, and the implications.
He could be the cause of every pain and torment Eve suffered, from knowing him, to facing the problems that could track him down.
A hand shot out blindly, and Kas grabbed the counter, knocking over his glass in the process of pulling himself to a proper sitting position.

"S-settle.. down?" He gasped. "I.. I.. don't know.."

Loika smirked and sipped from her glass this time. " So i finaly find a fault in the great and confident Kas's armor. I guess now you see why im sinical of the world. She set her glass back down and patted Kas on the back with a laugh. " Welcome to the club buddy. You not only get to watch your back now. You get to watch hers too. "

"I know.. I know." Kas sighed, massaging his temples. "That's why we were going through all the trouble to get that vaccine. It wasn't just because I don't agree with what it does.. Somebody threatened Eve. It was 'do this, or say goodbye'."

He still wasn't spilling the whole story, though. This Somebody knew who he was, where he came from, and everything he was capable of. Eve was the easiest way to control him.

"I don't know what to do. It's not fair to throw her into this disaster.. but.. I feel like I can't live without her."

He would let others into his work, into his fun; but hadn't let anyone into his life.
Eve was changing how the world made sense, though. He didn't just want her, he needed her.